We all joined Sea of Faith because there was much we didn’t
know or understand. We continued our search within this community, coming
together regularly to share the stories of our studies. Our searches have taken
us in many quite different directions, but generally around the fringes of
religions.

Some still search hopefully within the ancient writings
of their religions. Thousands have spent lifetimes in such study, and diminishing
returns have become exhausted. There are many words written on religions, and, these
are the major — perhaps only — source of knowledge we have about them. Others
look at the many religions that fill the minds of humans everywhere, and seek
to understand how religions serve humankind. Yet others seek to understand why
religions are such powerful forces within people’s lives.

There are many paths to the understanding that members of
our community seek. Each member brings the understandings they have gained, and
shares them with us all. It is in this spirit that I bring the stories I have
discovered; I will share a biological view of our humanity.

I have been an agnostic since George Bernard Shaw (GBS)
convinced me that many things were unknowable; I was then a very young Christian
bookworm, just arrived in the UK back in 1944; I plundered the wonderful
bookshops that I had never discovered in Australia. GBS convinced me to become
agnostic. After the war, I decided to read the Bible, all of it. I needed to feel
sure that agnosticism was a realistic response. I remained agnostic. In a very
long life since, I became a biologist, a geneticist and student of animal behaviour,
now called an ethologist. Slowly it filled me with the excitement of evolution,
realizing of course that though biology could show me more about human life, it
could never deal with unknowables, like gods.

Knowing about animal and human behaviour in a psychology
department taught me about the societies in which we all live; genetics and the
study of selection enriched my understanding of evolution.

Societies probably evolved early in animal development.
Societies are the context of most animal and human life; they became the repository
for all knowledge accumulated in any species, and the source of all morality
throughout the animal world. Indeed, how could animals live together in the
thousand situations and arrangements they encounter without rules; moral rules?
Societies always live on, they are the immortal part of animal life; on the
other hand individuals within them are temporary: mortal. In our species, it is
our societies that will continue, ever accumulating all that is human, such as
our attempts: to manage and change our societies; to improve moralities; to
educate children; to create fairness and harmony; and to develop our humanity.

Through society, we and all animals are educated in
societal living, we all learn to participate in the life of our own species;
they, and we, may quarrel with neighbours, but we do so within the security of
our own societies. We all learn to live in an expected world of everything around
us; but we all focus our attention especially on others like ourselves, our conspecifics,
our societies.

We either invented or discovered gods. When we first
found ways to tell stories we discovered we could talk and ask questions. Since
we were very recently speechless animals and without questions, the questions
about the experiential stories we were telling soon gave ways to other
questions. There had to be a cause for all those things we now discovered we
didn’t understand: the sun and rain, the storms and winds, the unexplained
deaths and illnesses.

Then there were those dead relatives who appeared in our
dreams, doing what we still did. Our ancestors found answers and found roles
for powers beyond their own. Their answers were the first steps towards our
religions. But our newly conscious and speaking ancestors really had to face
the millions of questions. We didn’t invent gods, they did; there was no
option. They really needed spirits or gods powerful enough to organize a world
that was brand new to their understanding.

When they needed help, something common enough, it was
inevitable that someone asked whether such power figures could provide that
help. Asking for help in the hunts and forage would often be rewarded; they
were competent hunters and foragers. Their little groups had rules of
behaviour; they knew what was right or wrong, it was embedded in their society,
it was ancient. I suspect that we attributed to figures of power the qualities
that our societies had taught us to value. We took the moralities of our
society and attributed them to our newly invented ’gods’. Clearly gods must
oppose everything objectionable in individuals; those things not conforming to
society’s expectations.

Most of us don’t think much about the topic ’society’.
Yet most animals live in small communities within their societies as we do. Animal
societies take hundreds of forms, each society presumably evolving because
individuals with the particular evolved social behaviour could best thrive in
each of these societies. They also allowed the distribution of the resources of
each habitat, though not always fairly. Societies are built by natural
selection into the minds of individuals, for it is individuals who create, maintain
and change societies.

To maintain any sort of stability, whether in a society
or your own body temperature, a cybernetic system is needed; this ’general system’
model was first described by von Bertalanffy in 1950 1.

Your body ’knows’ the temperature it expects and always
monitors it. It is able to detect any change and has mechanisms to restore it: negative
feedback. The great distortion a marathon runner creates can be controlled by
the negative feedback mechanisms. If the mechanisms fail, the distortion may be
increased, it might even become positive feedback, in which case the individual
is in serious trouble.

What are these mechanisms in society, for you know that
you live in a stable society? Indeed, natural selection could not produce anything
that could not maintain itself throughout all the problems of living. Natural selection
can only produce cybernetic systems, that is ones that are stable and self-maintaining.
Systems without these properties would fail, whether as individuals or
societies. Let’s look at the mechanisms maintaining societal stability.

The famous philosopher of science Daniel Dennett 2. once described ’the unconscious driving experience’ in which we have all
walked or driven somewhere and could not remember anything of the trip. The
driving required skills and the trip may have been through a busy city or
pleasant country scenes; you noticed and remembered nothing. You were aware,
not conscious. You were aware — in monitoring mode — checking that everything
your senses delivered to your mind was as expected; it must have been, for you would
have remembered anything unexpected. Your senses deliver a stream of images,
mostly visual. Each of these is then compared with the images you have of these
ordinary scenes in memory.

If there is no difference, the comparison brings the
memorized scene image up to date and discards information on the comparison; it
has no further relevance and would be clutter, so it is best if it is not
remembered. Bringing images up to date is important; only up-to-date images would
be relevant for future visits to these surroundings.

If the comparison yields a difference, the result is very
different. The mind immediately generates what is called an Orienting Response (OR),
a moment of high attention, high learning, some cognition to understand this
difference and, finally, make a decision as to how to respond.

The OR was first described by Pavlov 3. in 1927.
Thousands of studies of the OR have been made by scientists, mainly
psychologists, using people and laboratory animals. On the other hand I know of
no studies by ethologists who see ORs daily in the natural contexts in which
they evolved. With an OR, you will remember! But the OR involves the cognitive
challenge that you and every animal faces.

The famous anthropologist Gregory Bateson challenged me
with this question: ’Is it a difference that makes a difference?’ For you and
presumably every animal in an OR, the answer to this question is urgent. You
may need more information from your senses, you look around urgently. From your
memory you seek images of similar events or experiences; all this information must
then be integrated to find an understanding and reach that decision. You and
me, we know this requires both consciousness and cognition. For one who has
watched animals as a career, the question is also, ’can animals require less?’
Indeed, I have elsewhere argued 4. that our own consciousness and
cognition evolved from the processes within the Orienting Response, for natural
selection usually starts from existing traits when we are looking to produce
something new, and our extended consciousness and cognitive capacities were
quite new to animal life. How does ’unconscious driving’, what I call being aware,
and the OR relate to our question on societal stability?

I suggest that the combination of awareness, Dennett’s
unconscious driving experience, and the OR was natural selection’s really
magnificent development. It meant that every animal could live its life in the
present, fully aware, monitoring its social and physical environment finding
all expected, yet remembering nothing, avoiding cluttering memories with the
endless expected nothingness of everyday living. Yet the OR was always immediately
available, offering the ability to detect and instantly respond to any change,
any possible danger.

Animals could live strategically in an expected
environment, aware but living only in the present, able to monitor everything
sensed, endlessly checking for change. Change, or recognition of anything is
only possible by a comparison of two images, one from the senses and one from
memory. The animal or person does not need a memory filled with the minutiae of
everyday life; the unconscious driving experience is one of natural selection’s
blessings.

Being aware rather than conscious, living only in the
present, is a talent we brought from our animal ancestors. It is the endless
checking that all is familiar, that society is stable, expected. Only with this
endless conformation of expected stability can change be detected. Animals have
had this awareness/OR system for many millions of years. Our transition to
people added the new talent of improving the consciousness and cognition of the
OR, not just for minutes, but for hours, accessing all memories, indeed,
bringing them under mind control. It is this mind we brought from animals.

As a student of animal behaviour, I believe that animals
too have evolved ways of extending the ’conscious’ period of the OR, but
without the need for our ability to access memories not relevant to their
immediate situation. Two such situations are in hunting and exploration. You have
watched on television a lion hunting, creeping forward, inch by inch,
motionless at the tiniest disturbance in the potential prey, finally deciding
on the moment to charge, to attack. Every moment needed high attention, some consciousness,
access to every relevant memory leading finally to that decision built on experience.

Attention in exploration is also extended in time. In
novel surroundings, the animal must be highly alert to images from experiences
of danger; but it is now comparing sensory input with categories rather than
exact images from memory; it must learn everything relevant to new decisions to
be made. We often know those decisions, for eventually the animal will have ’chosen’
places for drinking, for body care, for resting and perhaps sleeping and regular
paths between these familiar places. It has built new mental maps of a now
familiar environment. I define environment as that portion of surroundings in
which animals can detect change, in other words their maps of their world. This
mapping will include only parts relevant to the animal, places to be monitored,
all and every day in the aware state. These memorized image maps of all
physical and societal surroundings provide the endless flow of remembered
images being compared with the images the senses are taking in, moment by
moment.

Environment is the expected world we all inhabit. For
animals monitoring also may contain the territorial boundaries of its group. It
includes the dominance ranks of the others in its group, and how close to
approach those of ’higher’ rank. Mothers and offspring must monitor endlessly
their spacing from each other and where there are moving and potential dangers
for youngsters. All are monitoring for dangers, ready to respond with an alarm
call immediately any potential danger is detected.

This raises the question of the search images carried by
animals and people, a part of the monitoring that is ever a part of the aware state.
The best example of a search image is familiar to us all. We know a dog can be
used to track a fugitive or someone lost, holding the image in its mind,
continuously comparing it with every new imaged sensed, allowing the decision to
continue following the trail. A dog can also be trained to detect the presence
of drugs in airports. Training provides the search images it uses daily.

Search images are part of the animal minds we have
inherited. We know that our hominin ancestors moved around all and every day, hunting
or foraging. Each carried many search images necessary to their activity. The
hunters sought tracks, droppings and the rubbings of prey animals. Their female
gatherers knew the images of hundreds of edible plants or small animals and the
sort of evidence of their presence. Effective search images kept our ancestors
well fed for millions of years. When they created stone tools, suitable stones
and rocks for making tools entered the search images of these foragers. Every
likely stone was picked up and examined before the decision to discard or keep
it.

I suspect that this inherited search image talent has
been built into modern shop design. We wander through supermarkets or
department stores, aware and monitoring with our search images to do our
shopping, always alerting to anything that provides an OR, and a decision to discard
or purchase.

To me, so much of our human minds was designed in
animals. I have never worried about gods or god stories for the last seventy
years. Yet I knew all these religion stories of our origin and I have learned
much about an alternative set of stories, evolution. My stories still provide
no information of gods and their hundred forms of magic, of creating us in
their image, monitoring our guilts or virtues, keeping log books of our suitability
for entrance to heaven. But they do provide real evidence that we were created
by natural selection, always shaping and reshaping our minds and bodies. My
stories completely turn the stories of our creation by magic into beautiful myths.

The stories arose in the minds of people who really had
no information on which to create any realistic stories of their origins. Their
knowledge of their world was built on their need to thrive, and to survive.
Gods were made by hunter-gatherers who were dependent on what they could find
if they were to thrive every day. They were subject to every force of climate
or weather, of every unexpected raid by greedy neighbours. Gods provided
stories to account for everything they then had no way of understanding.
Certainly believing in mostly friendly gods gave them the security they expected
in every part of their physical and societal worlds. They could thank their
gods for8 every survival through the
forces of nature or enemies, but the credit was always their own. Every
improvement they and the communities they built, was seized by natural
selection; it produced us. But they shaped the religions they produced into
ways of thinking and living that became part of daily life, a cultural life
within a warm and embracing community. It became part of the success of our
species. We no longer need religion to maintain our societies, but it remains a
powerful emotional need for most people, not easily rejected nor discarded.
Time, information and education will eventually make religion unnecessary for
perhaps most people; but never for all people.